by Sam Eastland
Pekkala returned to the estate one evening to find the Tsar’s horse tied to a fence post outside his cottage and the Tsar himself emerging from the front door.
‘Pekkala! I have left you a present inside.’
‘That is very kind of you, Majesty.’
The Tsar smiled. ‘You might not think so when you see where I have left it.’
‘It’s not in the cottage?’
‘It’s underneath the cottage,’ replied the Tsar, untying the horse and climbing into the saddle, ‘in your own private sanctuary from the madmen of this world.’
Pekkala did not reply.
‘I know how you feel about confined spaces,’ the Tsar told him, ‘and that you have no intention of going down into that hiding place if you can help it.’
‘That would be correct,’ replied Pekkala.
‘So, as a reward, or call it a challenge if you like, I have gone down there myself and left you a bottle of my finest slivovitz plum brandy. All you have to do is go and get it.’
The construction of these hideaways did little to quell Zubatov’s fears.
Although many of Zubatov’s contemporaries believed him to be paranoid, the Okhrana had learned that it was better to err on the side of caution, in case the failure to report a legitimate threat would recoil upon their heads.
Inevitably, word would reach the Tsar.
Then the Tsar would summon Pekkala.
‘Go to Moscow,’ he would say. ‘See what Zubatov has dreamed up this time.’
Zubatov insisted that all his meetings take place face to face, since he did not trust the phone system. As head of the Okhrana, Zubatov had tapped every phone exchange in the country, so there was good reason for his lack of faith.
‘Will I find him at the Metropol?’ asked Pekkala, his eyes glazing at the thought of another long train ride from St Petersburg.
‘Of course,’ replied the Tsar. ‘That’s the only place where he feels safe, although I’m damned if I know why.’
‘It’s because the anarchists also meet there, Excellency. They like the food too much to blow it up and Zubatov is convinced they are planning to turn it into their headquarters some day.’
The Tsar laughed. ‘I know what you think of Zubatov, Pekkala, but please don’t judge him too harshly. After all, he’s only trying to save my life.’
But Pekkala knew this wasn’t quite true. Zubatov’s greatest fear was not the death of the Tsar, but rather the removal of the Tsar from power. In Zubatov’s cold thinking, the Tsar himself could be replaced. But if the Tsar stepped down from power, Zubatov knew exactly who would seize control in the name of Revolution. Most of these men and women he knew by name, having spent his career trying to kill them.
In 1917, when the Tsar abdicated the throne, Zubatov’s nightmare came true. After dinner with his family, Zubatov excused himself from the table and went out onto the balcony of their Moscow apartment to smoke a cigar. When the cigar was finished‚ instead of returning inside‚ he leapt to his death into the street below.
Although the chair’s tapestry upholstering was faded and torn, Pekkala had immediately recognised the ornate woodwork on its arms as being the same type which once graced the lobby of the Metropol.
True to their word, the Bolshevik Central Committee had taken the hotel over as their headquarters during the 1920s, during which time most of its original furnishing, including the crystal chandeliers, polished brass and navy-blue carpeting, had lapsed into disrepair. Now that it had been converted once again into a grand hotel, frequented by foreign diplomats, journalists and actors, the original, dilapidated furniture often found its way out into the street.
Driving past the hotel one dreary winter’s day, Pekkala had spotted the chair, covered with snow and left out for the sanitation department to remove, or for someone to smash to pieces, and use the wood for kindling.
‘Stop!’ Pekkala had ordered.
Kirov skidded to a halt. ‘What is it, Inspector?’
Without a word of explanation, Pekkala left the car and picked up the chair. After carrying it to the Emka, he manhandled it into the boot.
In spite of Kirov’s initial groan of disapproval, Pekkala had often since returned from meetings to find Kirov sitting fast asleep in the chair, arms folded on his stomach and heels resting on the edge of his desk.
Pekkala couldn’t help wondering if he himself might once have sat in this same chair, head bowed towards Zubatov, while the man spelled out his fears.
Now Pekkala settled
Now Pekkala settled his body on to the battered upholstery, feeling the horsehair stuffing rustle as it took his weight. He had not slept for so long that his brain was grinding to a halt. His consciousness was fading away. The last things he saw as his eyes drooped shut were the drawings on the wall. They seemed to slide back and forth, one over the other, as if the puzzle of the red moth was trying to piece itself together.
While these images replayed in Pekkala’s mind, something caught his attention.
Slowly, his eyes reopened.
Rising to his feet, Pekkala went to the wall and removed the tracing he had made of the background in the picture, which left the moth itself as an empty space in the drawing. Then he pulled down the drawing he had made which traced only the diagonal lines within the framework of the moth.
Carefully, he placed one drawing over the other.
Then he stood back, fingertips pressed expectantly together, and examined the combination of lines.
What Pekkala had noticed was that some of the lines of the background, which were made to look like branches, corresponded to some of the lines which had been drawn as patterns on the wings of the moth.
Now Pekkala made a third sketch, using only the lines which matched up.
With a grunt of anticipation, as if afraid the lines might at any moment rearrange themselves into obscurity, Pekkala lunged for the bookshelf and began hauling out the volumes of railway tables. In the twenty-four volumes of the Soviet railway system each district was given a letter. Within that district lay a numbered grid, which broke the district down into smaller sections. The front page of each volume contained a map of that grid, the remainder of the volume listed all trains either arriving in or departing from locations within it. Pekkala flipped through one and, not finding what he wanted, let it fall to the floor. Thirteen volumes later, he finally came across the chart which had flashed behind his eyelids, as if he had been staring at the sun.
The volume Pekkala had chosen contained the layout of the Leningrad district.
Returning to his desk, Pekkala laid the grid page next to the painting. For a moment, his eyes raced over the two images. Then his back straightened suddenly. ‘There!’ he shouted, momentarily startled by the sound of his own voice.
It wasn’t the railway lines which had caught his attention. Instead, it was two crooked paths, at their widest in the top left-hand corner of the picture, and narrowing until they almost touched as they dropped down to the right. What Pekkala had noticed was that the course of these two lines, transforming from a tree branch into the pattern on the wings of the moth, corresponded exactly to the outline of the Gulf of Finland as it narrowed into the Neva River, which turned sharply to the right before trailing down to the bottom of the image, where it once again metamorphosed into the background of the picture, but he could see it now, like glimpsing the bones beneath the skin of a translucent deep-sea fish.
He could clearly make out the island of Kronstadt, depicted as a fleck of colour on the moth’s wing. And there was the promontory where the fortress of Oranienbaum stood. His finger tapped nervously against the wide stretch of ground that marked the location of Peterhof.
By now, Pekkala was dizzy from concentrating, but he could not tear his eyes from the diagram. So many other lines and speckles criss-crossed the painting that he wondered if what he had found was nothing more than a coincidence, or else perhaps these other lines had just been placed there in order to camouflage the out
line of the city.
He lost track of time.
Pekkala had no idea how long he had been staring at the painting when another idea began to take shape in his head. What if, he thought, the diagram contains not one map but two.
Within an hour, he had isolated everything which corresponded to the outlines of Leningrad. This left him with a strange, segmented shape which at first glance resembled an oblong piece of honeycomb, divided by a line down the middle. The segments were not symmetrical, however, nor were they all the same size.
This second map appeared to be a narrow street, with houses marked on opposite sides. It was obviously a built-up area, judging from the proximity of the buildings to each other.
Where before his mind had stalled out in the maze of dots and lines, now his brain seethed to the point of overload as layers of meaning appeared like mirages from the once indecipherable blur.
The next thing he knew, a bell was ringing in his ear.
Pekkala sat up with a snort. He had fallen asleep on the floor. Exhaustion had finally overtaken him. He had no memory of deciding to rest. He wondered for a moment if he had fainted as he sat there at his desk. A piece of wax paper was stuck to his forehead. He peeled it away and blinked as he tried to clear his blurry vision.
The bell rang again.
Kirov must have forgotten his key and is buzzing me from downstairs, Pekkala thought to himself as he got up and headed for the door.
The sky was glowing in the east. Soon the sun would rise above the rooftops of Moscow.
The bell rang a third time and he realised it wasn’t the door buzzer. It was the telephone.
Pekkala spun around, walked to the far end of the room and grabbed the black receiver from its cradle.
‘Have you figured it out?’ asked a curt and hostile voice.
Pekkala didn’t need to ask who it was. Only Poskrebychev, Stalin’s perversely efficient secretary, would call this early in the morning and only Poskrebychev would begin a conversation without bothering to identify himself.
‘We’re close,’ replied Pekkala.
‘How close?’ demanded Poskrebychev. ‘Stalin wants to know precisely where you are with this.’
‘It’s a map,’ explained Pekkala.
‘What is?’ Poskrebychev’s voice rose in confusion. ‘I was asking about the painting, the one with the butterfly or moth or whatever it is.’
‘The painting is a map,’ Pekkala told him. ‘Actually, it appears to be two maps, one overlapping the other.’
‘A map?’ Poskrebychev repeated. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes! It is somewhere in the district of Leningrad. I hope to have it narrowed down within the next few hours.’
‘It’s a good thing you didn’t need that woman’s help after all. What was her name? Churikova?’
‘But she did help. Lieutenant Churikova helped a great deal.’
‘Impossible. The woman is dead!’
Pekkala felt a jolt, as if a door had been slammed inside his chest. ‘What are you talking about, Poskrebychev?’
‘Her train was bombed last night. Blown to pieces. I heard they found one of the engine’s wheels more than half a kilometre away.’
As Pekkala struggled to absorb the information, Churikova’s blue eyes seemed to radiate inside his skull, like lights shining up from deep water.
‘The whole cryptographic section was wiped out,’ continued Poskrebychev. ‘It is a shame. We could have—’
‘Wait a minute!’ Pekkala cut him off. ‘Churikova wasn’t with the cryptographic section. She was ordered off the transport after we put in a call to the station. She missed that train, Poskrebychev!’
‘Then she owes you her life, Pekkala. If it hadn’t been for you she’d be scattered across the Russian countryside by now.’
‘And where is she now?’ asked Pekkala.
‘I’m damned if I know. Either she’s on a different train or else she’s still sitting there at Ostankinsky station.’
‘I’m on my way there now. Tell Comrade Stalin we will have an answer for him as soon as we can.’
‘Soon might not be soon enough, Pekkala. The Wehrmacht are almost at the gates of Leningrad.’
‘When are they expected to enter the city?’
‘They aren’t,’ said Poskrebychev. ‘It appears that the Germans have something else in mind for Leningrad.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Pekkala.
‘Intelligence reports indicate that they are encircling the city. They are laying siege, Pekkala. If what you need to find is inside Leningrad you had better get in there and get yourself back out again before the Germans complete the encirclement. By Christmas, the people of Leningrad will be eating rats. If it lasts any longer than that, they’re going to start eating each other.’ With those words, Poskrebychev ended the call.
Pekkala replaced the receiver, hearing the distinctive click as the cradle took its weight, the sound like a child clicking its teeth together.
Moments later, Kirov returned to the office. ‘You didn’t sleep, did you?’ he asked as he removed his gun belt and hung it on a coat peg by the door. ‘I had a little bet with myself that you wouldn’t even close your eyes . . .’
‘It’s Leningrad.’
Kirov stopped in his tracks. ‘You figured it out?’
Pekkala showed him the railway map, then the overlapping maps he had traced off the painting.
‘I see that your memorising of those timetables wasn’t complete madness after all.’
‘We must speak to Churikova again,’ said Pekkala. ‘She might be able to help us pinpoint the exact street more quickly than if we were working on our own. Call the station. Ask if she’s still there.’
‘Inspector, that’s virtually impossible. You saw how anxious she was to catch up with her section and these days there must be half a dozen troop trains passing through Ostankinsky every night. She would have just hopped on the next one headed west.’
‘The Germans bombed the train she was supposed to have been on. Her entire section was wiped out. They probably destroyed the tracks as well. She might still be at the station.’
‘Very well, Inspector. I guess it’s worth a try.’
Minutes later, they were on the road.
This time, Pekkala sat behind the wheel. As always, he drove fast and recklessly. Each time they were forced to stop, he waited until the last moment before slamming on the brakes. Then he floored the accelerator to get the Emka rolling again.
Kirov, meanwhile, was studying the painting so intently that he barely seemed to notice as he lurched back and forth in his seat. Scattered in the seat well at his feet were the numerous sketches Pekkala had made. Reaching down, Kirov snatched one up and held it beside the red moth. With one eye closed and the other squinting as if he were aiming down the barrel of a gun, Kirov compared the painting to the sketch which formed the branches of the tree. ‘I see the Neva!’ he exclaimed. ‘I see the Gulf of Finland!’
‘But what about the pattern on the wings?’ asked Pekkala. ‘What street is it depicting? There can’t be too many places in Leningrad where the houses are bunched so closely together.’
Kirov fished around in the seat well until he came up with the sketch he wanted. ‘Inspector,’ he said, ‘I don’t think this is a street map.’
‘What? It has to be! Those little squares and rectangles are houses.’
‘No.’ Kirov shook his head. ‘There are two layers of these shapes on either side of what you are calling a street.’
‘Then those must be gardens behind the houses.’
‘Inspector, houses this densely packed in the city of Leningrad would not have gardens.’
‘But what else could it possibly be?’
By now, they had put central Moscow behind them and were travelling through an area of warehouses and factories, some of which were only half finished and whose construction had been abandoned at the outset of the war. Gaps left for windows in the brickwork assumed the hollown
ess of eye sockets in skulls.
‘It’s an apartment building,’ said Kirov. ‘It has to be. This thing you call a street is actually some kind of hallway, with rooms leading off it on either side. At least . . .’ Kirov’s doubts began to overtake him. Frowning, he turned the first one way and then the other.
‘They’re the wrong shape. Where are all the entran—?’ And even as Pekkala spoke, the words froze upon his lips.
He slammed on the brakes.
The Emka skidded until it was almost sideways, finally halting in the middle of the road.
‘Why have we stopped?’ shouted Kirov. ‘You haven’t spotted another one of those hotel chairs, have you?’
‘Give me the painting,’ said Pekkala.
Kirov handed it over.
A car approached them, headed in the opposite direction. The driver slowed as he passed, eyeing them suspiciously, and did not stop.
‘Look, Inspector,’ began Kirov, ‘maybe you’re right. I don’t know Leningrad that well. They could be gardens, I suppose.’
‘They aren’t,’ murmured Pekkala. ‘They’re rooms.’
‘Rooms? What kind of apartment building has so many rooms laid out in rows like that?’
‘A palace,’ replied Pekkala.
‘But there are many palaces in Leningrad. There’s the Winter Palace, the Stroganov, the Menshikov, the Taurida . . .’
‘This is the layout of the Catherine Palace. I’m sure of it. There,’ he said, aiming with the tip of his finger at the honeycomb of cells. ‘The Arabesque Hall, the Blue Drawing Room, the Stasov Staircase. The sizes all match. The spaces you thought were gardens are the rooms up on the second floor.’ While he spoke, Pekkala’s eyes darted back and forth over the canvas. It was as if the insect had disintegrated, and from the blur of colours, the skeletal frame of the palace had risen to take its place.
At first, the uniformity of each tiny blue and red and green paint fleck, mirrored in both of the wings, seemed to rule out any correlation between the colours and the rooms. But then he spotted a mistake. One of the cells on the right wing had been painted orange, whereas the same marking on the left wing was red. ‘There,’ he told Kirov, pointing out the tiny dabs of paint. ‘These are the only two which don’t match. There is red elsewhere in the design but this is the only place where the painter has used orange.’
